Realme X7 Review: A no-nonsense budget 5G smartphone

The Realme X7 series first made its debut early in December, bringing two new 5G devices in the mid-range. While the Realme X7 Pro focused on the premium mid-range segment, the vanilla X7 was designed for more budget-oriented consumers. The Realme X7 arrives with all the bells and whistles of a budget 5G phone, including a versatile camera setup, a reliable chipset, a vibrant display, and a decent battery accompanied by super-fast charging. So, without any further delays, let's take an in-depth look at the Realme X7.

In terms of design, the Realme X7 is relatively compact, light (weighing 176g), and slim (measuring 8.1mm). One reason for the light and compact build is the phone’s polycarbonate frame and body, although the screen is protected by an unspecified glass. Realme also claims that the phone can resist light splashes of water. The vanilla Realme X7 is available in a Nebula and Space Silver finish, with the former featuring the 'Dare To Leap' branding stretched across the back.

However, the silver finish draws a perfect balance between style and subtly. Considering its weight, size, and thickness, the Realme X7 is quite comfortable to grip, although it does come at the cost of that premium appeal. One downside here was that the rear surface attracted too many fingerprints, although there’s a transparent silicone cover in the box that may help tackle the issue.

Unlike the Realme X7 Pro, the camera lenses here protrude out of the module. The buttons on the side of the device are pretty easy to access, while the USB-C to 3.5mm adapter compensates for the lack of a headphone jack. The phone has a single speaker that delivers pretty good sound quality, while the-Res Audio certification enhances the listening experience with a pair of headphones.

For the screen, the Realme X7 opts for a 6.4-inch FHD+ (2400x1080 pixels) Super AMOLED panel. There’s no fancy high refresh rate here, but the phone does have a touch sampling rate of 180Hz. The peak brightness of 600 nits falls way short of the thousand mark, but that isn’t surprising at this price.

The DC Dimming can reduce flickering to ease eye strain, while the in-display fingerprint scanner is fast and responsive. This may not be the best AMOLED panel around, but it is as good as it gets in the sub-20K segment, and it is undoubtedly better than the best LCDs used in the segment.

When it comes to performance, the Realme X7 uses a MediaTek Dimensity 800U SoC, an entry-level 7nm 5G chip. The chip is paired with the Mali-G57 GPU and 6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage. In our Geekbench 5 test, which just happens to be CPU-oriented, the MediaTek Dimensity 800U chip was seen to be a little slower than the Snapdragon 750G mobile platform.

That’s not to say that this is a bad chip as it handles most tasks without much effort, although it does have some limitations while gaming, and you won’t be able to go all out in more demanding titles. However, it is worth noting that it can keep pace with, and in many cases outpace, any smartphone in the segment, while offering 5G connectivity.

The Realme X7 opts for a triple-camera setup, with a 64 MP, f/1.8 sensor at the helm. However, Realme isn’t touting a 64 MP Sony IMX686 sensor here and is content with the Samsung ISOCELL GW2 sensor. The main sensor is paired with an 8 MP ultrawide shooter and a 2 MP macro camera. On the front, the hole-punch camera cutout houses a 16 MP selfie shooter with an f/2.5 aperture.

The primary camera handles dynamic range and exposure, while photos look clear with a ton of detail. Additionally, portrait shots also come off looking quite good. However, all of this is contingent on the lighting in the scene. We also noticed a bit of over-sharpening and loss of detail of distant objects. In low light, there’s a fairly decent night mode. With sufficient ambient light, night mode does a good job of capturing detail with less noise, although photos can get very blurry without a steady hand. Overall, Nightscape mode can be a hit or a miss, depending on how steady your hand and objects in the frame are.

The Realme X7 also has an ultrawide camera that pumps out good results in the right light, although you’ll notice a good amount of distortion. Night mode is available on the ultrawide camera as well, but the results were pretty bad. The macro camera can be a hit or a miss, in most cases it was a miss, struggling to capture anything worthwhile in anything other than bright outdoor light.

The main camera on the Realme X7 can record 4K video at 30fps with fairly good results in the right light. You can only switch between main and ultrawide cameras when shooting in 1080p resolution. However, switching to 1080p indoors or in poor light comes at the cost of detail with visibly more noise. Overall, video quality is on-par with most smartphones at this price. Selfies on the 16 MP sensor also look good in daylight. There is some aggressive beautification, but you do get social-media-ready results.

Battery capacity is slightly lower on the Realme X7 as compared to its ‘Pro’ sibling. However, 4,310 mAh was more than enough to get through a full day, especially when you consider the display maxes out at 60Hz. Moreover, if you aren’t impressed with the battery capacity, then look no further than the 50W charging brick included in the box. It took me less than 30 minutes to get a 50 percent charge while going from 0 to 100 percent takes about an hour. Full-day battery life with super-fast charging to back it up is pretty cool at this price.

The Realme X7 runs Android 10 with the Realme UI skin on top. While Realme’s custom skin is reminiscent of stock, there’s plenty of bloatware to remind you that you aren’t running stock Android. Even so, a lot of it can be uninstalled, but annoying push notifications will have to be disabled in the settings. Apart from that, there are some nifty customisations like optional navigation gestures, a Smart Sidebar for shortcuts to apps and tools, and more. Overall, Realme UI does have a minimalist feel and does a decent job of mimicking stock Android.

At a starting price of Rs 19,999, the Realme X7 is an excellent smartphone. There is a lot on offer here, with a good OLED panel, a capable mid-range chipset, a good camera in daylight, all-day battery life, super-fast charging, and most importantly, 5G. It can certainly go head-to-head with any smartphone in the sub-20K segment and is a lot better than a lot of them.

However, Realme’s ace in the hole here is 5G. If you take away the MediaTek Dimensity chipset, the Realme X7 is barely any different from the Realme 7 Pro. Realme’s big play is affordable 5G, a network that isn’t available in India yet. Take, for example, the Mi 10i, whose big play is 108 MP camera as well as 5G, the former of which is actually accessible. What we’re trying to get at here is that the Realme X7 is any place where 5G is readily available is an excellent phone, but in India, it is just another good sub-20K smartphone, something that isn’t hard to come by.